Beginner's Guide
Category:Guides Introduction Welcome to Ikariam! This game can be a bit addictive, as events happen in real time, in your browser: there's nothing to download. Ikariam is a game that allows you to make alliances, build cities, and expand your territory. With enough time and resources, your city will become the heart of an empire. Ikariam has some whisperings of games like Civilization, without the addition of years or decades: you follow your own tech tree in the same time scheme as the rest of the world. When you begin, you will start with your own capital on an island that can hold up to 16 cities. The island has wood, a wonder and one one of the following four luxury resources (Wine, Crystal Glass, Marble and Sulphur). Your first view of Ikariam after logging in will be of your city, including a town hall in the middle of a land populated by parcels with red and blue flags. As you play, you will transform it to become a flourishing city with hundreds of citizens, diverse units and ships, and many interesting buildings through researching fascinating technologies. Resources As you play the game you will encounter a number of resources. These resources are needed to advance your civilization. There are five resources: :* Wood - Used for everything: Troops, Buildings, War Ships. :* Marble - Used for all buildings except the Academy. :* Crystal Glass - Used for academy expansion and in upgrading units and ships; also used to build the Diving Boat. After completion of Glass Research you can also pay crystal to finish research early. :* Wine - Used at the Tavern once you research the Wine Press. :* Sulphur/Sulfur - Used when building troops and war ships (except the Slinger, Doctor, Cook, and Diving Boat). Wood is your standard resource - it is used for making and upgrading buildings, creating ships, and building units. The other four are luxury resources, which can only be gathered after you have researched Wealth. Luxury resources are used at advanced levels of buildings and units. You will notice that on your island there will be only one luxury resource facility. You must trade with or pillage other players who have access to different islands to acquire the other luxury resources. When your city becomes an empire through colonization, you'll be able to colonize different islands to gain personal access to the other luxury resources. Buildings Buildings play a major role in the growth of your towns. They can build units and ships, house scientists, or entertain your citizens. The first four buildings you encounter are: Town Hall, Academy, Barracks, and Trading Port. :* Your town hall is your main structure - it shows how happy/sad your people are, your housing capacity (which you increase by upgrading the town hall), your income/costs, and the distribution of citizens, workers, and scientists. It also allows you to change your town name. :* The Academy houses scientists who work on discovering new technologies for your empire. :* The Barracks allows you to create Units for both defending your towns and attacking others. :* The Trading Port gives you the ability to build your own fleet of Cargo Ships, which are vital for trade, raiding, and colonization. Technologies Technology research is the main way to advance your civilization. There are four main streams of technology: Military, Economy, Science, and Seafaring. Choose one and the program will start your scientists researching the next in line if possible, without stopping. Well Digging should be one of your first researches. It grants you a morale bonus and a bonus to your population cap, very important to a beginning town. Conservation is also an important first research as it allows you to build a Warehouse, which will protect some of your resources from being pillaged should someone decide to pillage you. When you get access to grapes and wine, the Wine Press will allow you to build a Tavern, which can tremendously boost your town's morale, providing more people to work. Don't bother researching Paper for its own sake; it's a trap! Although that 2% extra research per hour is tasty, it is only useful once you have a level four or five academy. Paper is needed for other useful technologies, however, such as Espionage or Cultural Exchange. Beginner's Steps Now that we have the basics, let's put this all together. The following are the recommended first steps. Don't forget to review the Ikariam User Interface section if you need to get familiar with what you're seeing. # Rename your town via the rename link at the top of town hall. # Build an academy. (When you reach a high levelled city it will look best at either of the furthest sides) # Set wood production to 30 by clicking 'Show Island' and then clicking on the pile of wood (or click your Town Hall, which will show the status of your citizens in your town, click the icon on the other side of the bar to the workers). Something to remember about Ikariam is that resources are produced in real time (i.e. if you are making 30 wood an hour, you will get an additional unit of wood every 2 minutes). # Once the academy is completed, set the number of researchers to 8. Notice that your income may now be in the negative: that is because you do not have enough citizens that produce general wealth, i.e. gold. This is not a problem, since you start out with lots of gold. Gradually, as your town size increases and you get more citizens, you will once again be profitable. Do not be afraid of spending gold in the beginning. # In the academy, change your research over to Science. By doing this you will be able to gain the benefits of Well Digging early on, which is +50 population max and +50 happiness. This is ideal since you can then change back to Economy research path and let the game glide you through Conservation, Pulley, and Wealth, while having the added population. # Build the Barracks and the Trading Port (but keep the Trading Port at low levels, see Pillaging for the reason why). You'll also want to build an expansion for your town hall as soon as possible afterwards to account for future growth of your populace. (Barracks will eventually look best directly above Town Center). Definitely get a ship early on, as it will prove crucial. # At about 4 hours, you will finish researching Well Digging (or if you had an Academy at level 3 with full scientists you can finish it in 1 hour), and you should notice that your birth rate will jump by one person (e.g. from 2.85 people an hour to 3.85 an hour). Now change your research back to Economy. # If your Saw Mill isn't at level 2 by hour 5 on your island, you should donate to get it there. Hopefully most people on the island have donated a little bit, but if you can muster the resources to finish off the 350, then the 10 extra lumber is probably worth it in the long run. # Research through Wine Press, while upgrading your academy and town hall as much as you can. # Build a Wall, because other stronger players will start to look for weak villages that they can attack and then loot. If you start getting attacked repeatedly, upgrade your Warehouse to such an extent that they don't get any resources, and they will stop. Also, it is important to not upgrade your trading port even though it's really cheap to do so. In order to build a Warehouse you will need to have researched Conservation. The rest is up to you. Remember to check the Towns report for happenings and the Diplomacy report for messages. Luxury Good Costs People can, and should, sell what they have for whatever the market will bear. However, the production cost in gold of any given resource can be seen on the list below. *Wood from not having one citizen earn per hour *Luxury Goods from not having two citizens earn per hour: two citizens are required to gather one luxury resource. *Research from not having one citizen earn per hour, plus an additional cost for the actual research. These values do not take into account the relatively fixed and/or shared costs of the Saw Mill, Luxury Good, Town Hall or Academy expansions, needed to bring in more people or resources, nor the corruption level (because this is a beginner's guide). Working Strategies Technology Path A good and advisable research path at the beginning of your game would be: Switch to Science → Well Digging → Switch to Economy → Conservation → Pulley → Wealth → Wine Press This allows you to expand your town as quick as possible, with the bonuses from Well Digging and from the Tavern. It also gives you the very important access to luxury goods and the ability to trade with other players. After that, you could follow this path: Switch to Military → Dry-Dock → Maps → Professional Army → Switch to Seafaring → Deck Weapons → Ship Maintenance → Expansion → Switch to Science → Paper → Espionage → Switch to Seafaring → Foreign Cultures *Switching to Military at this point is optional. Since Culinary Specialities requires both Professional Army and Expansion, it will automatically start researching down the Military (Professional Army) and then to Seafaring (Expansion) before going to Culinary Specialities. However, if you choose to follow the recommended research path, you should switch it to Seafaring (where it will automatically research Espionage which is a requirement for Foreign Cultures) when it starts researching Culinary Specialities. Professional Army gives you access to, among others, the phalanx, a basic unit to defend your city, but requires a level 4 barracks to build. If no one is attacking you, it is possible to postpone this research. Expansion is crucial to obtain, as it will allow you to found your first colony after building a palace. Foreign Cultures is also a very important research, enabling you to join an alliance after building an embassy. These are the basic researches you should obtain in the beginning. Other researches you should aim for are the Cultural Exchange, to further boost your town happiness by building a museum, and Helping Hands, to increase production. Remember to constantly upgrade your academy as your population increases. When you are not able to do so (due to a lack of crystal), wait until you finish wealth, as this will allow you to trade with other players. Defending Should you find yourself under attack, demolish your Trading Port back to nothing. Your attackers can only take resources through your trading port so demolishing it before they arrive limits how much they can steal from you. If you are going to be away for a while and have few to no defenses, it is probably best to demolish your port before leaving for the same reason. It costs very little to rebuild and only moments to demolish. However, if you are going to be absent for a longer period of time (at least 48 hours), consider activating Vacation Mode: this will completely protect your city against any attack, but you will not produce resources nor research. Prevent Being Pillaged Donating If you are attacked by a player of the same island as yours, it is possible that you are not donating to the luxury good and wood deposits common to all player of the island. When this happens, it is common for the attacker to first send a message warning you if you are leeching and not donating. Everyone benefits when everyone donates. Do not rely on a benefactor to do all the grunt work for you. Try to donate something acceptable even early on. While what defines equitable donation is certainly in the eye of the beholder, you should be able to donate at least 200 wood by level 5 town hall. Don't forget to donate to the luxury good deposit as well as to the wood deposit. As long as you're making an effort relative to people who aren't, you'll be less likely to get pillaged. If your town is level 4 or higher, have full complement of workers at both luxury and wood, and have donated nothing, you should expect to be pillaged. You should certainly be able to donate to both sawmill and luxury as soon as you colonize. The first thing that requires any large resources is your Governor's Residence, and even though that takes some resources, you have the ability to replenish the usage by transport or by gather in the time it takes the Governor's Residence to finish. In fact, you will likely be gathering resources at a rate faster than you can spend on a new colony -- take this time to give it back in donations. Every time you get over , split it apiece between luxury and sawmill. In time, you'll be seeing over per hour, and that will be enough for most building purposes. Hoarding wood makes you a target. It also doesn't make sense to hoard wood when you can't use all of it. As well, wood isn't usually an attractive proposition to purchase for two reasons: 1) You can't possibly have enough to make the purchase of wood practical (people can usually gather faster than they can purchase/transport your quantity), and 2) you're likely selling the wood at a price too expensive. Wood expense is at least twice as expensive to transport than luxury. A transport holds 300 units. If is worth 1 luxury, most people would rather transport 300 luxury than (150 luxury worth). Adhere to Market Rates This is a controversial issue. Some players get uptight when they feel, rightly or wrongly, that you are selling at a price that undercuts their established rates of goods. Most players will sell and buy whatever they can afford. It would be good practice to announce first why the attack, but sometimes it takes a little prodding from the victim to determine why. In the mean time, keep your trading port low and your warehouse high. Naval defense It is also important to have some ships on your town. Your fleet does not need to be powerful, but because no one can pillage you as long as you have at least one ship, this can easily discourage some potential pillagers. Three Ballista Ships should be enough, since the attacker will need to send some Flamethrowers, which have a greater upkeep. Note that you are not using your fleet to defend you per se. Instead, your are making yourself a less attractive target. Island Strategies by Luxury Good *Marble ( )- You can upgrade all of your building far more quickly than individuals with other resources, except the Academy. Make friends with someone on an island with a Crystal Mine and offer to trade for your marble. *Wine ( )- Your greatest strength will be population growth, when you can research Wine Press and build a Tavern. Until then, simply sell it to other towns. *Crystal Glass ( )- Research is your greatest strength. Try to get your Academy up to 6 as soon as possible. Most people will want to trade for crystals so offer them 1:1 for resources you need, like marble or sulphur. Sulphur tends to be harder to get. *Sulphur ( )- This luxury resource allows you to follow the path of war more than any other. You can produce more Units than anyone else, so Pillaging will be what you are most likely to gain from, unless you feel like trading your sulphur for the resources of others (which is usually a far wiser option when starting out because everyone else is likely bigger than you). Related sites *Game Servers - play on a server near you. http://ikariamtip.com/tutorials